However, the Protestant Reformers of the sixteenth century continued to hold the Augustinian view of the millennium; nevertheless they suggested changes in eschatological interpretation that led to a renewal of premillennialism in the seventeenth century.

The popularity of the Left Behind series suggests that premillennialism still has a hold on many evangelicals (though I suspect that much of the appeal lies in a kind of lingering curiosity rather than heartfelt conviction).

They have, despite occasional protestations to the contrary, achieved remarkable successes politically, economically and socially over the last half century so that the siren song of premillennialism no longer has the same appeal it once did.

An almost impossibly rich work, it explicates a host of thorny theological, philosophical, and epistemological controversies and positions (Marsden, for instance, insightfully draws the connection between, on the one hand, the intellectual appeal of dispensational premillennialism and the opposition to Darwinism and, on the other, the peculiarly American “non-developmental” understanding of history).